Worlds Apart
by Mainsail
Summary: One of them? Impossible. He's a human, not some sort of monstrous dragon-person creature. Besides, they kidnapped him! He's not about to just take them at their word! No, he's going to escape, get home, and warn everyone that the Veil's not nearly as one-way as they think.
1. Family Ties

_Chapter published 29 June, 2014. I'm not J.K. Rowling, and I don't own Harry Potter._

_Summary: One of them? Impossible. He's a human, not some sort of monstrous dragon-person creature. Besides, they kidnapped him! He's not about to just take them at their word! No, he's going to escape, get home, and warn everyone that the Veil's not nearly as one-way as they think._

_What to expect: NonHuman!Harry. Eventual Harry/Hermione. No significant slash. No blatant bashing - but everyone's human (well, maybe not technically _human_, but flawed and imperfect all the same), so don't expect everyone to be likeable at all times._

**Chapter One - Family Ties**

The drive back from King's Cross was wholly uncomfortable. Uncle Vernon had taken to muttering under his breath about "those ruddy freaks" and who they thought they were, Aunt Petunia _still_ didn't appear to have recovered from the shock of Tonks' pink hair, and Dudley was alternating between picking at the fashionably-frayed hem of his shirt and giving Harry odd looks.

Harry, meanwhile, was content to just lean against the window and think about nothing. There was a dull fog hanging over his mind, and the cool glass against his forehead gave him some sort of feeling to focus on.

He'd been doing a lot of that sort of thing lately. Ever since the battle at the Ministry and the revelation of the prophecy, he'd felt vaguely numb and disconnected, going through the motions of his life with only half an eye on what he was actually doing. He'd lost the last person he really considered family, leaving him feeling very much alone, and based on the prediction Trelawney had made all those years ago, he didn't imagine he was much longer for the world himself.

"So, er... How'd your year go?"

He didn't have any illusions about his odds against Voldemort, really. Sure, he'd survived all of their encounters so far, but that was just dumb luck and other people saving his hide at the last minute. Voldemort was one of the most dangerous wizards alive, without question, and Harry was nothing more than a teenager. It wouldn't even be a contest if it came down to a one-on-one duel; it would just be a slaughter.

"Harry?"

Harry's head jerked up, and he looked over at Dudley. "Sorry, did you say something?"

"I was just... wondering how school went."

Harry settled his head back against the window. "Not great, really."

"Oh. Erm... loads of schoolwork, then?"

"It was a big testing year," Harry replied. He saw no reason not to, after all. Translating his life into Dursley-friendly terms was better than dwelling on his inevitable demise. "Big set of standard tests, real career-determining sort of stuff."

"How d'you think you did?"

Harry shrugged noncommittally. "Alright, I suppose. Flunked History, that's for sure."

"Really? What happened?"

"Passed out in the middle of the exam, didn't even get half the questions done."

"Oh." Dudley fell silent for a minute, evidently casting about for new topics of conversation. "Er... How about girls? You got a girlfriend or anything?"

Harry shrugged again. "Went on a date with this one girl, but it went south."

"Ouch. You going to try and fix things up with her?"

"Probably not. She's seeing someone else now, and she only really went with me to talk about her old boyfriend, Cedric."

"Cedric? Wasn't he the one who, er..."

Harry turned and looked at Dudley, surprised that he remembered that. Dudley looked sort of awkward, like he didn't quite know how to finish the sentence with tact.

"Yeah," Harry admitted, "he's the one I had all those nightmares about. Voldemort killed him right in front of me, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. I barely made it out alive, myself."

"...Oh."

Harry leaned back against the window, content to let the conversation end there, but Dudley was apparently determined to get Harry talking. Why, Harry had no idea, but it wasn't long before his cousin tried again.

"How about your, er, godfather, then? What's he doing these days?"

Harry winced, and he didn't quite manage to keep his voice from wavering when he spoke. "...He died a few weeks ago."

Dudley didn't respond for a long moment, but when he did, it was more human Harry than had ever heard his cousin sound before. "Oh. Sorry."

From there, the car was allowed to lapse into silence, and no one spoke for the rest of the drive.

* * *

Dinner that night was a surprisingly normal affair. The first thing Uncle Vernon did upon entering the kitchen was turn on the television, and from then on, conversation didn't rise past "pass the gravy". Dudley nearly tried striking up another conversation with Harry at one point, but the moment he opened his mouth, Aunt Petunia shot him a glare that she normally reserved for Harry.

He backed down, giving Harry an apologetic look and returning to his pork chops.

At the first opportunity, Harry retreated up to his room and lay down on his bed, and from there, he didn't move a muscle. Physically, he was fine, but dealing with people all day had been exhausting, and he wanted nothing more than to just drift off to sleep.

About two hours later, he'd managed a light doze, still fully-clothed, but a quiet, tentative knock at the door roused him and forced him to open his eyes.

Grimacing, he got up and stalked over to the door, ready to hex whoever it was that had ruined his nap, Decree be damned. The sight that greeted him when he opened the door, however, threw him completely off his grouchy stride.

Dudley was standing there, holding his hands behind his back, and he looked... uncertain. Apologetic. Contrite, even.

Harry hadn't the slightest clue how to react.

"Can... Can I come in?" Dudley sounded even more unsure than he looked, which was impressive.

"Er... sure," Harry replied, standing back and opening the door wide enough for his cousin to go by.

Dudley came in, and after a moment of looking awkward, he set a brown paper bag - which blatantly contained a bottle of something - down on the desk and sat down in the room's one chair. Harry closed the door and took a place on the bed, leaning up against the headboard with his pillow behind him.

He didn't say anything. He was starting to get an idea of what was going on, and if his cousin wanted some sort of heart-to-heart, he could bite the bullet and speak up first.

Several awkward, tense moments later, he did.

"Look, Harry, I... Well, I've been thinking."

Harry bit back the sarcastic response that life with his relatives had made instinct in him and let his cousin speak.

"I've never been very good to you. ...Hell, I've been pretty damn terrible, all told. Between the teasing and the Harry-hunting, all the shite I put you through at school... In your place, I probably would've snapped and gone on a killing spree or something."

He tried to continue, but he couldn't seem to find the words, so instead, he pulled the bottle out of the bag, unscrewed the top, and took a practiced swig.

"But you didn't," he eventually continued. "No, you just kept taking it - and if you'd just left it at that, I'd probably be keeping it up.

"But then last summer happened. Those Dementor things-" Harry raised his eyebrows. Dudley had actually remembered what they were called? "-came after you, and you could've just run. I know you, you can outrun me any day. You could've just run home and been safe."

He took another swig.

"Instead, you stayed, you did m... magic outside of school, and you nearly got expelled. You put everything on the line, and you... Hell, Harry, you saved my sorry excuse for a soul."

Harry blinked. He'd never really thought of it like that, but it was true. The whole encounter had been just a drop in the bucket of horrid misadventures that made up his life, but for Dudley... well, evidently, it had been a big experience.

"After all I did to you, everything I put you through, you still turned around and saved my ruddy soul... and it got me thinking. Mum and Dad may call you a freak and say you deserve everything you got... but you're still my cousin. You're family, and I never so much as gave you a shot.

"I know you probably hate me, and I can hardly say I'd blame you... but you're my cousin, and a damn better person than me, and, well..." He trailed off, took another swig from the bottle... and then held it out to Harry. "I want to try and make things right, if you'll let me. I want to get to know my cousin."

Harry honestly didn't know what to say. This was Dudley, who'd led the neighbourhood kids in terrorizing him growing up. This was Dudley, who'd turned the whole school against him and ensured he had no friends whatsoever. This was Dudley, who joked and bragged with his friends about beating up ten-year-olds.

But this was Dudley, who'd apparently given his life a long, hard look, and this was Dudley, who clearly wanted to make amends.

And frankly, Harry just didn't have the energy to summon up a righteous fury and rail at him for his past sins.

And Harry could really get behind getting drunk and forgetting his problems for a while.

What the hell.

Harry reached out, accepted the bottle from his cousin, and took a swig of his own. It burned on its way down, and he coughed and sputtered a bit, but it left behind a pleasant warmth that spread out through his body.

"Look, Dud," he eventually said, once he'd got his throat clear, "you're right. You've been a right arse to me my whole life, and you've made things fairly hellish for me at times." He gave a wry laugh and took another drink, which went down a bit smoother than the first. "But hell, you're hardly alone in that. I don't even know if you're in the top five."

"Oh yeah?"

"Nah," Harry replied dismissively. "Take my Potions professor, Snape. He's had it out for me since the day I walked into his classroom. There was bad blood between him and my dad, you see, back when they were in school, and he's the sort to take his spite where he can get it..."

* * *

The next morning dawned far too bright and far too early. Hateful spears of sunlight jabbed at Harry's eyelids, demanding entry so they could burrow deep into his brain and start pounding on the walls. If it weren't for the rail ties that someone had hammered into the back of his head, he would have rolled over and pressed his face into the pillow, but as it was, such movement just wasn't an option. All he could do was lay there and wish for death.

Eventually, though, over the course of what could only have been millenia, the pain slowly began to fade. The rail ties gradually shrank down into mere wood screws, the sun's assault dwindled until it was simply irritating, and Harry ever-so-slowly built up the will to turn his head to one side.

The room was blurry, as usual, but he could more or less make out the hands on his clock. Depending on which hand was which, it appeared to be either nearly four o'clock in the afternoon or around eleven twenty. Harry suspected the latter; he was fairly sure he hadn't slept _that_ long.

Idly, he wondered why he hadn't been hounded out of bed to make breakfast that morning. He could hardly remember a day at the Dursleys' that he hadn't been awakened to fry up extreme quantities of bacon or sausage for his relatives to consume.

Mystified, he levered himself up into a sitting position and slowly swung his legs over the side of the bed. He spotted his glasses over on the desk, accompanied by a glass of water and two small, blurry dots, and with gradual, careful movements, he went and collected them.

The dots, it turned out, were painkillers, and he snatched them up immediately. The headache had been fading, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to give it some help. He popped them in his mouth, swallowed them with some water, and then proceeded to drain the glass once he realized just how dry his mouth had been.

Under the glass, he found a note written on a spare bit of parchment.

_Professor Potter, _

_You're a pretty fun drunk! I'll see about getting us some more drink so we can do it again some time._

_Hope your head's not too bad. I left you some pills to help out with that. I'll keep Mum and Dad out of your hair in the morning as best I can._

_Dud_

Harry blinked down at the note in surprise in surprise. Dudley was being considerate. He checked the other side of the parchment on the off-chance it would provide some explanation - only to find his own untidy scrawl, even messier than usual, staring back at him.

_THE PROPHECY_

_THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO KILL THE DARK LORD IS COMING... BORN AT THE END OF JULY... AND THE DARK LORD WILL MARK HIM AS HIS EQUAL (WITH A WICKED SCAR)... AND ONE OF THEM WILL KILL THE OTHER, FOR NEITHER CAN __DIE WHILE THE OTHER'S ALIVE__LIVE WHILE THE OTHER DIES__ ? (THE LAST BIT'S WEIRD, BUT THE POINT IS, IT'S HIM OR ME)_

He vaguely remembered trying to tell Dudley the prophecy, stumbling over it several times before settling on writing it out. He had to admit, the actual last section, "neither can live while the other survives," still didn't make sense to him sober, but just for completeness' sake, he jotted it down on the parchment, along with the section about his parents' defiance (with a little arrow to where it belonged) and the repeated section at the end.

That done, he set the parchment down and headed for the bathroom. He'd apparently spilled more than a bit down his front the night before, and he didn't want to smell like Mundungus Fletcher any longer than necessary.

* * *

Half an hour or so later, feeling - and smelling - a bit more human, Harry made his way downstairs. His stomach had started growling at him in the shower, and he wanted to find something to placate it as soon as possible.

Dudley, it turned out, was watching something in the living room, but when he heard Harry come down, he met him in the kitchen.

"How's the hangover, then?"

Harry shrugged and opened up the fridge. "Not so bad now, but awful when I woke up. I thought my head was going to split open." Reaching in, he picked out a half of a cantaloupe wrapped in plastic wrap. "Thanks for the pills, by the way."

"No problem," Dudley said with a chuckle. "I should've guessed you'd never really got drunk before. You need to pace yourself better next time."

Harry plucked a spoon out of a drawer and took his makeshift breakfast over to the table. "There's not really a lot of opportunity to drink at my school. People will occasionally smuggle in a bottle of firewhisky or two, but they have to last a whole party spread out among half the house. Mostly you just end up with third-years sipping a bit and going on about how pissed they are."

Dudley laughed. "Yeah, you get a lot of that at Smeltings too, but if you know who to talk to, you can get hold of most anything."

"Mm," Harry acknowledged, mouth full of cantaloupe, and the conversation subsided.

After a minute or two of surprisingly companionable silence, Dudley spoke up again. "So, I have to ask: Did you _seriously_ go back in time?"

Harry's spoon stopped halfway to his mouth, and for a moment, he just stared at his cousin in disbelief. "_That's_ the part of my life you're having trouble with?"

Dudley shrugged. "Well, the rest of it's all dragons and swords and magic and all that. It all sort of fits together, you know? But the time bit just sort of came out of nowhere, and you were pretty pissed by then, so I wasn't sure if you actually meant literally going through time. Plus, you had your Professor hat on pretty hard at that point, so I didn't really have a chance to get in a word."

"My 'Professor hat'?"

Dudley snorted a laugh. "Yeah. Once you got a fair bit of drink in you, you started sounding like some of my professors from school, going on and on like you were teaching a class." He snorted again, and he wasn't entirely able to keep the laughter out of his voice. "Trouble was, the more pissed you got, the harder it was for you to stay on a single subject. By the end of the night, you were jumping around from Quiddish to house-elves to whatever other bloody thing popped into your head; no stopping, no waiting, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred pounds. It was pretty hilarious."

Harry groaned and buried his face in his hands, but his cousin reached over and chucked him lightly on the shoulder.

"Hey, it could be worse. You could be a Weepy Drunk or a Naked Drunk. Professor Drunk's not so bad."

After considering it for a moment, Harry had to shrug. "I suppose not. If you'd asked me, I'd probably have guessed Angry Drunk, and I imagine Professor Dumbledore would agree."

Dudley grinned. "Oh yeah? Why's that?"

"Didn't I tell you about me trashing his office just a few weeks ago?"

Dudley raised his eyebrows. "No, you didn't! Was that after he told you the prophecy?"

Harry nodded.

"Ah. Well, when you got to the prophecy, you decided to write it out on paper, 'to get it all straight', but when you couldn't get it right, you started going on about how 'divination is bollocks anyhow' and your friend Hermione had the right idea walking out on it."

At that, Harry couldn't help but laugh. "That sounds about right. Anyway, when I, er..." The laughter in his voice drained away as he skirted by the memory of Sirius' death. "...When I got back from the Ministry, Dumbledore sent me to his office to wait for him. I wasn't exactly in a great state, and when he got back and started being sympathetic, I sort of... reacted poorly. I ended up throwing about half the little magical doodads in his office at the walls and shelves and things, shouting a load of stupid-"

The ring of the doorbell cut him off, and both he and Dudley frowned in the direction of the door.

"Expecting anyone?" Dudley asked, keeping his voice low enough that whoever was outside wouldn't hear.

"No," Harry replied, "if any of my friends were going to come visit, I'd think they would have mentioned it yesterday on the train."

"Maybe it's one of Mum and Dad's friends," Dudley said. "I'll go get rid of them."

He got up and headed for the small front hallway, obviously nervous. Harry wasn't much better; he pulled his wand out of his pocket and held it nervously at the ready.

From the hall, Harry heard the sound of the door opening.

"I am here to speak with Mr. Potter. Is he available?" The visitor's voice was a deep, rumbling bass, and he had an accent that reminded Harry vaguely of the students from Durmstrang to Hogwarts for the Triwizard Tournament. Harry couldn't place it, but then, he was hardly a linguist.

The tone of Dudley's reply, on the other hand, Harry could definitely identify. It was the exact same tone he'd used when Hagrid had come to the hut on the rock to deliver Harry's Hogwarts letter; the boy sounded terrified. "H-Harry?" he called. "T-there's someone at the door for you."

The Order was meant to be watching him, and the blood protections were supposed to keep out anyone meaning him harm, but that didn't mean the Death Eaters couldn't find a way past all that. He kept his wand at the ready as he slowly made his way out to the hall.

Turning the corner, though, Harry stopped and blinked. The man standing at the door wasn't at all what Harry had expected based on his voice. He was extremely tall, seven feet if he was an inch, but he was thin, with a vaguely Ron-Weasley-ish reediness about him that took away most of the overwhelming sense of bigness someone his height would otherwise have - though his height alone was still enough to make Harry feel self-conscious about his height. Harry wasn't excessively short or anything, but ever since he'd entered the wizarding world, he'd felt overshadowed by how much shorter than his father everyone always said he was. It grated after a while.

"Mr. Potter?"

Harry shook himself; he'd just been standing there staring. "Right, yes, sorry. Who are you?"

"My name is Dokhmet," the visitor replied. The middle of his name had the same sort of throat-clearing sound a Scot would put into pronouncing the word "loch" - not that that really helped Harry narrow down where the man's accent was from. "I am an Unspeakable with the Ministry. May I come in?"

Harry tensed. The Unspeakables worked in the Department of Mysteries, which he and his friends had snuck into a few weeks prior. He couldn't imagine them being terribly happy with him, what with all the presumably-priceless research that had been disrupted, damaged, or destroyed. "What's this about?" he asked, giving serious consideration to making a run for it out the back.

"We believe we may be able to rescue your godfather, Sirius Black."

Harry's mouth dropped open, and a flood of emotions rushed through him; that wasn't what he'd expected at all. It was a long moment before he was able to respond. "R-rescue him? You can bring him back?"

"Possibly," Dokhmet replied. "We have prepared everything to attempt the ritual, but we require your assistance to perform it."

Harry didn't know what to say. He wanted to believe the man, he really did, but it seemed far too good to be true. _Rescue_ Sirius?

"I can understand that you might be hesitant," the Unspeakable said. "Would it help if I told you that the procedure has been reviewed and approved by your Headmaster and several of your school's professors?"

Dumbledore had approved it? Harry didn't think bringing Sirius back was possible, really... but then, he wouldn't have thought flying broomsticks or magic spells were possible. The Department of Mysteries studied all sorts of strange and unusual things. Who was he to say they couldn't pull someone back through the Veil?

"You're sure it'll work?" he asked.

The Unspeakable gave him a small smile. "We cannot be sure until we try it, I will admit, but I am confident that we will succeed. At worst, we fail, and all we have lost is an afternoon's effort."

He had a point. Trying couldn't hurt, after all. "Alright, I suppose that makes sense. How soon could we try it, then?"

"We could leave immediately, if you wished."

Harry patted his pockets. He had some loose wizarding change, probably enough for a ride on the Knight Bus if he needed it, and wand was right there in his hand. "I've got everything I need," he said. "How will we be getting there?"

"I have a car parked outside. We will be driving."

Harry turned to Dudley, who had more or less recovered from the shock of meeting Dokhmet and was now looking at his cousin in vague astonishment. "I'll see you later, I suppose! If this works out, you might be able to meet my godfather after all."

"A-Alright," Dudley replied. "I'll... I'll see you then, I guess!"

Harry's smiled a bit at that, then turned back to the door. "All ready, then."

"Very well," the Unspeakable said, and with that, he started for the dark green Ministry car sitting in the driveway.

Harry followed hot on his heels, thoughts of a reunion with Sirius running through his head, his excitement building up a bit. He'd thought his godfather lost forever, but he'd forgotten the fact that the Department of Mysteries was a great big research division. If anyone could work out how to rescue someone from the Veil, it would obviously be them.

"So how's this whole ritual thing actually work?" he asked, finding himself eager to know just how they might be pulling Sirius back into the land of the living.

Dokhmet, navigating the car through the streets of Little Whinging with only a little of the typical ineptness of wizards, considered his words for a moment before responding. "It is... a deceptively simple procedure, relying heavily on your emotional and familial connections with your godfather."

Harry frowned in thought. "If it's so simple, why hasn't it been done before? I can't be the only person who's been close to someone who's gone through."

Giving him another small smile, the Unspeakable replied, "We have been working on this particular project for decades now. Only recently, however, have we gained enough information to carry it out with an appreciable chance at succeeding."

Chewing over this, Harry didn't respond, and Dokhmet was apparently content to continue the drive in silence. Thoughts of Sirius returning and what the two of them were going to do afterwards occupied his mind for the rest of the drive.

* * *

Harry stepped quickly out of the cramped phone box, coughing a bit to clear out his lungs and nose. He hadn't noticed it until partway through the drive, but Dokhmet smelled like a habitual smoker, and while it hadn't been so bad in the reasonably-ventilated car, in the tiny booth that comprised the visitors' entrance, it had been somewhat choking.

The Unspeakable, for his part, didn't seem terribly interested in waiting for Harry to clear his airways. "This way, Mr. Potter," he said, heading off in the direction of the security desk that lay between them and the lifts.

Stifling a complaint, since antagonizing the man who would be rescuing his godfather probably wouldn't be the best plan, Harry followed behind as quick as he could, glancing around at the Atrium as he went.

Most of the damage from the duel between Voldemort and Dumbledore had already been repaired, by the looks of things, save for the notable exception of the Fountain of Magical Brethren. Where the fountain had once stood, there was now a big pile, presumably the remains of the fountain, hidden under a plain white sheet. A pair of Ministry workers in orange-striped robes were discussing the contents of several large rolls of parchment - plans for rebuilding the fountain, Harry guessed.

Aside from them, the only other person in the cavernous space was the security witch, and she was nearly nodding off at her post. She took Harry's wand without hardly looking over at him, stuck the scan's results on the spike without even reading it, and then handed his wand back without comment.

As they walked away, headed for the lifts, Harry said, "I would've thought they'd increase security around here, now that they know Voldemort's back and all."

"One would assume so," Dokhmet replied vaguely. "Perhaps their efforts are more focussed elsewhere at the moment."

Harry didn't know quite how to respond to that. If it were him, he'd be securing the Ministry itself as a top priority - what could be more important than that?

Harry pondered the question further as they stepped into a lift and headed down, but his thoughts gradually turned back to the matter at hand: Sirius. If this ritual of Dokhmet's worked, he'd be getting his godfather back. Would it be difficult? What would happen if it went wrong? Would Sirius be happy to be back? What if he were mad at Harry for getting him killed in the first place? Would-

"Department of Mysteries," interrupted the serene voice from the ceiling.

Harry banished the useless thoughts, steeled himself, and stepped out into the corridor. He didn't know what to expect, and he didn't have a good idea of how the ritual would actually go, but he wasn't about to let his nerves get the better of him. He'd faced down Voldemort time and again and lived to tell the tale; he wasn't about to let some mysterious ritual get under his skin. He followed Dokhmet determinedly down the hall, heading straight for the door that had haunted his dreams for much of the last year.

It opened easily enough for the Unspeakable, but when it closed behind them, the circular room of doors started to spin, just as it had the last time Harry was there. The room whirled in a blur, and Harry couldn't help but wonder how the Department's staff actually got where they were going.

Dokhmet didn't appear concerned, though. Once the spinning stopped, he simply addressed the ceiling and said, "Death Chamber, please."

One of the doors popped lightly open.

"What," Harry blurted, "simple as that?"

Already walking towards the open door, Dokhmet didn't even turn to look back at him. "Simple as that," he confirmed. "This way."

Unlike the Atrium, no one had apparently made an effort to make repairs in the Death Chamber. The room's distant walls still bore obvious signs of battle, scorch-marks and craters remaining where stray curses had struck. The occasional dark stain still marred the floor where combatants' blood had been spilled.

The Veil itself, however, was entirely unchanged. Just as before, the translucent curtain swayed slightly, never quite coming to rest. It still whispered to him, too; the closer he got - and he was tangentially aware that he was walking slowly towards it without meaning to - the more he could hear indistinct voices murmuring from the other side.

"I can't understand you," he said, speaking slowly and clearly in an effort to be heard. "What are you saying?"

"So you do hear them, then?"

Harry started and whirled, jolted back to reality in surprise.

Dokhmet was standing directly behind him, looking down at him with another of his small, pleased smiles. The more Harry saw that expression, the more discomforting he found it.

"Y-yes," Harry responded. He was suddenly feeling rather uncertain about the whole situation; something felt very, very wrong.

Dokhmet's smile widened just a bit, the expression gaining a decidedly predatory edge. "Then our information was good, and you are indeed who we need."

Harry took a step back, stumbling a bit against the base of the dais upon which the arch stood. "Okay," he replied uncertainly, "good. So... rescuing Sirius, then?"

Dokhmet raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him. His expression plainly said, _You and I both know that's not happening._

"Not rescuing Sirius, then," Harry acknowledged, eyes flicking around to try and find a decent escape route. He didn't find one. "So why bring me all the way down here? Are you a Death Eater?"

Dokhmet actually laughed at that. "Not in the least, Mr. Potter. In point of fact, I was not entirely dishonest about why I brought you here."

"No?"

"No. You are indeed to be reunited with Mr. Black." He took a single, long-legged step forward, halving the distance between them with ease. Harry retreated back, clambering backwards up the archway's dais without taking his eyes off him. "You are simply to be reunited on the opposite side of the Veil."

_He's going to kill me,_ Harry interpreted, _and then we'll both be dead._

Harry snapped up his wand and opened his mouth to cast a stunning spell, but Dokhmet cut him off. The tall man closed the distance between them in no time at all and grabbed Harry's wrist in an iron grip, pointing the wand off at a wall before Harry could even get the first syllable out.

"Mr. Potter," he said, sounding more exasperated than anything else, "there is no need to be difficult about this. I think you will find-"

"No need to be difficult?!" shouted Harry, trying and failing to wrench himself out of Dokhmet's grip. "I'm not about to cooperate with someone planning to kill me!"

Dokhmet grimaced at him. "I have no intention of killing you, Mr. Potter. If you would just relax, we-"

"Relax, just _let_ you throw me through the Veil? Not bloody likely!"

Clenching his jaw, Dokhmet spat out a word in a language Harry didn't know. (From the way he said it, it was almost definitely a curse.) "So be it," he growled. "If you insist on it, we will do this the difficult way."

With surprising strength, he grabbed Harry around the waist and pulled him off his feet, lifting him bodily to carry him under one arm. He snatched his wand away with his free hand and tucked it away in a pocket.

"If there was any doubt that you are their blood," he muttered, mostly to himself, "this is proof. Stubborn and idiotic, every last one of them."

Before Harry could respond, they were moving, the fake Unspeakable climbing to the top of the dais, coming to stand directly before the Veil.

And then he stepped in, and the pair of them drifted weightlessly into oblivion.


	2. Kidnapped

_Chapter published 17 August, 2014. I'm not J.K. Rowling, and I don't own Harry Potter, but I'll let you know if either of those facts change._

**Chapter Two - Kidnapped**

"...Now, I've engraved a set of runes onto this big mirror of yours - see them here, along the bottom edge?"

Hermione nodded and leaned in close, examining the angular symbols that Bill had carved into the wide mirror over the mantelpiece.

"This rune-set is generally called the 'Eye of Truth'," the curse-breaker explained. "It negates any illusions, temporary transformations, or other magical means of disguise. For example..." With two taps of his wand, he turned Hermione's skin blue and disillusioned himself. "You see?"

Hermione checked the mirror, and, as advertised, the reflections of herself and Bill were unchanged.

"Does it only work on mirrors?" she asked. As with every other protection Bill had added to the Granger residence that day, she couldn't help but be curious about how exactly it worked. "Could they be engraved on a window for a similar effect?"

In response, Bill chuckled, removed a glasses case from the inner pocket of his Muggle-style jacket, and handed it over. "Take a look," he said.

Hermione opened the case and pulled out a set of understated reading glasses. There were small, carefully-carved runes lining the inward-facing sides of the arms, and she immediately started comparing them with the set on the mirror.

"They're... different," she said slowly, looking back and forth between the sets. "The glasses incorporate most of the mirror's runes, but not the leading _jeran _or the final couplet." She frowned down at the glasses, going through ideas in her head. "At a guess... the glasses see through disguises... and also..." Her brow furrowed further. "Well, they reveal something else as well, but there's a whole third alphabet here that we haven't covered in class and I've never seen before."

"I'm impressed," Bill replied, holding out his hand for the glasses. Hermione handed them back, and he pointed out various runes as he spoke. "You're right, this section here is definitely derived from the Eye. The changes deal with the fact that glasses refract rather than reflecting - that's why _jeran _was replaced with _naudiz _- and the inclusion of the set in a larger array means the ending couplet has to be a link, not a termination. The glasses see through disguises and illusions, as the mirror does, but they also reveal most kinds of magical energy."

Hermione's eyebrows shot up, possible uses for such things swarming through her head in an instant.

Bill laughed. "Exactly. They're incredibly useful, and it's something of a rite of passage for curse-breakers to engrave their own."

"You mean you made those yourself?" Hermione asked eagerly, already thinking about just what it would take to make some of her own.

"This is actually my second pair," Bill replied, placing them back in their case and putting it away again. "My first set... Well, just remember to always include runes to bleed off excess energy after a while. Having your glasses overheat on your face is no fun at all."

Wincing, Hermione said, "I'll keep that in mind."

"Good. Now, any other questions, or shall we move on?"

Hermione considered it, then asked, "What was that third language on there?"

"Ah, that," Bill replied. "Ancient Sumerian, that was. It's not covered on the O.W.L.s or N.E.W.T.s, but it's something a lot of curse-breakers tend to use. Versatile, but finicky."

"How did you learn it? Do you think you could recommend a book or two?" Hermione couldn't help but be interested. Something useful and tricky that they wouldn't already be covering in school? Ideal fodder for recreational study, as far as she was concerned.

Bill considered the question for a moment. "Most curse-breakers swear by the Iglott references," he said, "but while they're fine tools for translation, they're not exactly beginner-friendly. Unfortunately, I mainly learned in the field, so I don't really know of any beginner- or intermediate-level books on the subject."

Hermione shrugged that off. "That's alright. Professor Babbling said I could owl her if I had any questions, and I'm sure she'll have something she can recommend."

Nodding, Bill stood. "She knows her stuff, I'm sure she'll point you the right way. Now, shall we?"

Hermione stood up as well and gestured for him to lead the way.

Hermione nodded and stood, gesturing for him to lead the way.

"Next," he told her as they walked out of the living room, "I want to show you one of the wardstones I put in. I've buried three of them already, but one's still uncovered so I can give the wards their initial charge later. I'll bury it up once I'm done, but getting the wards raised in the first place generally takes direct contact, and that's difficult to get with several feet of dirt in the way."

"Is there a reason they're buried that deep?" asked Hermione. "Everything I've read agrees that wardstones are best buried, but none of the books have really explained _why_."

"There's no one specific reason, really," Bill explained. "Strictly speaking, you don't _have_ to bury them, but there are a fair number of benefits to putting them underground. It protects them from the elements, for one, keeping the wards stronger for longer..."

They discussed things back and forth as they went out into the back yard, and when they got over to the sizeable hole in the far corner, Bill pointed out a few features of the big block of stone planted in the ground. After that, they went back inside to look at the "decorative centrepiece" Bill had placed on the dining room table, which could be destroyed to trigger a one-time protective shield over the house. Before he could go into detail, however, they were interrupted by a rapping at the window.

"Expecting any owls, Hermione?" asked Bill.

Hermione looked up from examining the centrepiece and broke into a smile when she saw the owl outside the window. "Hedwig!" she exclaimed, immediately heading over to let her in.

The snowy owl swooped in as soon as the window was open and perched herself tightly on Hermione's shoulder. She huddled down once she was there and nestled herself into the side of Hermione's hair as deeply as she could, letting out a steady stream of soft, distressed hoots.

"She's trembling," Hermione said worriedly. "Does she have a letter or anything?"

Bill approached slowly, not wanting to frighten the obviously-rattled owl any more than she already was. "Doesn't look like it," he said. "She's Harry's owl, right?"

Hermione nodded.

"Is there any reason he might have sent her to you?"

Furrowing her brow and biting her lip, Hermione thought it over. She didn't like the possibilities. "He didn't say anything about sending her to me before we left, and if he was going to send her to stay with me, he'd at least write me a note to say why. She's come to me before, when Harry's birthday was coming up, so I could send him something, but she's never behaved like this. "

Bill frowned. "I think I should go check on him. The Order has someone guarding him at all times, but it can't hurt to be certain."

"I'll go with you," Hermione said. "Just let me write a note to my parents and we can go right over."

Bill looked like he wanted to object, but she continued on before he could speak up.

"Or do you plan to leave me here, alone, with unpowered wardstones to protect me and an underage magic citation waiting for me if I defend myself?"

Bill sighed, but there was a definite hint of amusement to his tone when he replied, "No, of course not, that would be highly irresponsible of me. Come on, I'll side-along you."

* * *

When the suffocating pressure finally let up, Hermione gasped, sucking in a deep, desperate breath. "_That's_ Apparition?! That was horrid! Do witches and wizards honestly do that all the time?!"

They'd arrived behind the garden shed at Number Four, the de facto Apparition point for the house.

"It's always worst your first time," Bill said, chuckling at her a bit. "You get used to the feeling after a while, and there's really no faster way to get places."

"If you say so," Hermione replied. She really couldn't imagine ever getting used to _that_.

Bill shrugged. "Some people don't ever use it, I suppose, and it's not like it's the only way to get around - but maybe now's not the best time to get into it. I'm going to go check on whoever's on guard. Can you go see what things look like inside?"

Nodding her assent, Hermione set off. She opted to go around to the front; if Harry's aunt and uncle were home, she reasoned, then doing things as by-the-book as possible would be the best plan. From what she knew of them, anything even as abnormal as knocking at the back door was liable to get under their skin, and she really didn't want to set them off if she could help it.

She rang the doorbell, and it wasn't long before the door swung open. She recognized Harry's cousin, Dudley, from the platform.

"Hello," she said, pleasantly as she could. "Is Harry in? I was hoping to talk to him."

Dudley looked a little shocked at that. "What, you're one of, er... his lot?" Surprisingly enough, he sounded more curious than displeased.

"I go to school with him, yes," Hermione replied, and, taking a chance, she stuck out her hand to him. "Hermione Granger, pleased to meet you."

Dudley's shock apparently grew, and after a half-second to gather his wits, he took her hand and shook it. "Dudley Dursley," he said, clearly somewhat flustered. "I, er... Would you like to come in?"

Hermione shook her head. "Thanks, but I just need to talk to Harry for a minute, and then I'll be off."

"Oh, right, sorry," Dudley replied. "He's actually out right now, and I'm not sure when he'll be getting back."

Oh, that was not a good sign. "Do you know where he went?" she asked, trying to keep her tone even.

Dudley shrugged. "The bloke who picked him up said he was from the Ministry, so he's probably there."

"Hermione! Give me a hand here?"

Hermione spun to see Bill coming around the side of the house, lugging the unconscious form of Remus Lupin in his arms.

"Professor Lupin!" she exclaimed. "Is he alright? What happened to him?"

"Struck on the back of the head," Bill said curtly, herding her in the door as he did. "He's breathing fine, but I don't want to risk waking him before he gets checked out. Head injuries can be nasty."

"Here," Dudley said, leading them into the living room and gesturing to a sofa, "set him down over here."

Bill did so, laying the unconscious man on his side with his head on a throw pillow. "I don't suppose there's any chance Harry's just asleep upstairs?"

Hermione shook her head. "Gone," she replied. "Someone claiming to be from the Ministry apparently came and took him."

Bill swore to himself in a language Hermione didn't know, then pulled out his wand. He concentrated intently for a moment, then flicked his wrist, and a silvery raccoon shot out, bounded around the room for a moment, then disappeared out through the side wall. "Dumbledore should be here soon," he said. "He can get the Order tracking him down, and hopefully we can get him back as fast as possible."

Hermione turned to Dudley, who was standing by the door looking nervous.

"What did the Ministry person look like?" she asked him. "If we can identify them, maybe we can track them down and follow them to Harry."

Furrowing his brow in thought, Dudley said, "Well... He was tall, that's for sure - taller than the door frame by, er..." He held his hands vaguely half a foot apart. "...About that much?"

Hermione's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Well, I suppose he won't be that hard to identify, then," she said. "There can't be that many seven-foot-tall wizards walking around Surrey."

Bill produced a quill and some parchment from somewhere and started noting things down. "What else do you remember about him?" he asked.

"He was skinny," Dudley continued, "really skinny - and he had an accent. He sounded, I don't know... German? Eastern European? Something along those lines. He said his name was... Dockmet, I think. I don't remember exactly, I might be wrong."

Over the next ten or so minutes, they got as many details out of Dudley as they could. Bill was halfway down his second piece of parchment by the time they heard the tell-tale _crack_ of Apparition from the back yard.

"That'll be Dumbledore," he said. "Hermione, can you go fetch him?"

Nodding her assent, Hermione made for the back door. With any luck, she thought, they'd have gathered enough information to get an effective search started immediately. Harry's kidnapper had taken him just after noon, so he had a solid three-hour head start on them, and with all the different methods of magical transport available, they could conceivably have made it halfway around the world in that time. Hermione could only hope that magical tracking was just as advanced as magical transportation.

Sliding open the glass door to the back yard, Hermione found Madam Pomfrey bustling towards the house, Professor Dumbledore following close behind her. "Madam Pomfrey, Professor Dumbledore!" she greeted.

"Where've you got Mr. Lupin?" the Healer asked, all business.

"In through here," Hermione replied, leading Pomfrey back through the kitchen to the living room. Bill stood as soon as they entered, while Dudley did his best to make himself appear inconsequential in the far corner. Dumbledore entered moments later, standing off to one side and surveying the room.

Wasting no time, Madam Pomfrey took out her wand and started casting diagnostic charms over Lupin's unconscious form. "One solid blow to the back of the head," she reported. "He'll be in for a headache when he wakes up, but I don't foresee anything more dangerous. A pain potion and some bed rest and he should be fine. I'd still like to take him to the Hospital Wing for observation, though."

"That would be best," Dumbledore agreed. "I daresay he won't find this room terribly restful once Harry's aunt and uncle return."

Hermione winced. She couldn't imagine the Dursleys would be all that pleased to find a bunch of witches and wizards standing around in their living room.

"I daresay you're right," Pomfrey responded, "but you and I both know my views on those _people_." She practically spat out the last word; there was plainly no love lost between the school's Healer and Harry's relatives.

"And you and I both know I agree with them," Dumbledore replied. "There are, however, no better options."

Madam Pomfrey's only response was a look that plainly said, _that's a load of tripe and you know it_, and, with a flick of her wand, she levitated Lupin's prone form and left with him in tow. The _crack_ of Apparition came from the back yard a moment later.

Dumbledore sighed, then composed himself and turned to Bill and Hermione. "Now," he said, "just what is it that's happened to young Mr. Potter?"

* * *

As Harry regained consciousness, he found himself disoriented and uncomfortable.

For starters, he hadn't even realized he'd _lost_ consciousness. He'd just been picked up and carried into the Veil - like a piece of luggage, which did wonders for his teenage dignity - and he had, apparently, been knocked out by the experience. He had a vague recollection of it hurting quite a bit, the sensation vaguely reminiscent of a weak Cruciatus, but the pain seemed to have passed.

Well, the _acute_ pain, at least. His entire body ached dully, like he'd been wrung out, and even lifting his arm felt like an ordeal. He felt sluggish, heavy, like he was being pressed down into the stone below him. It was a strange and altogether uncomfortable feeling, and it made him never want to pass through the Veil again.

Though, he reflected, sore and uncomfortable was hardly the worst fate, considering what the Veil was _suppposed_ to be. From what he knew, it was meant to lead straight to death, no exceptions, and he was fairly sure the dead didn't get to experience aching soreness.

Grimacing, he forced himself into a sitting position and looked around. He was fairly sure he looked exceedingly grumpy at that moment, but considering that he'd just been abducted through a portal to death, he was fairly sure a bit of grumpiness was justified.

The room was the size of the Dursleys' whole property on Privet Drive, if not larger, and everything about it was undeniably _big_. The double doors of dark, heavy wood at the far end of the room were tall and wide enough that Hagrid would be able to fit through them without a problem, the ceiling was high enough that Harry wouldn't feel all that uncomfortable riding his broom around in the place, and the counter that ran the length of one wall was about a foot higher than what Harry was used to, nearly up to his armpits. All in all, it had the effect of making him feel very, very _small_, and he really didn't like that all that much.

Of course, that wasn't the only bit he wasn't fond of. The dark metal bars he was behind, for example - he didn't much care for them. The corner of the room he was in was a cell, enclosed by a grid of bars on two sides and solid stone on two others, with a great, heavy padlock on the door and no amenities but a stone slab for a bed and a simple hole in the floor, a set of rough runes carved around its edge. It was a hard, inhospitable little area, and it did exceedingly well at making Harry feel every inch the prisoner.

The barren harshness of the cell was a fair contrast to the rest of the room, however, as the room at large had the sort of lived-in clutter that only ever existed in rooms one was comfortable enough in to just leave things sitting about. The wall opposite the counter had shelves running its length, carved right into the stone, and they were crammed with all sorts of things just jammed haphazardly in. Countless books were piled up with no obvious organization to them, hand-bound reams of paper mixed in with mass-produced Muggle texts. A few shelves were filled with stacked-up jars of what looked to be potions ingredients, all labelled in a language Harry couldn't recognize, and down at the far end of the long counter, a television and VCR were hooked up to a small, half-dissected electric generator in a scene that could've been taken straight from Mr. Weasley's shed.

Except Mr. Weasley's shed didn't have a cell at one end, Harry reminded himself, and Mr. Weasley wasn't known for kidnapping people for reasons unknown. Whoever it was that called that room home, they'd gone and kidnapped him, and people didn't just do that for no reason. More than likely, he'd been taken on Voldemort's orders; now that everyone knew the Dark Lord had returned, he could afford to be more blatant, kidnapping the Boy Who Lived from his home, probably torturing him for a while, and ultimately killing him.

Except Harry couldn't help but look over at the telly in the corner and wonder what sort of Death Eater took home a generator and tried to make it work. That wasn't normal Death Eater behaviour, as far as he knew. And the Muggle textbooks - he could see some of the titles in one of the nearest stacks, and there were biology texts, physics books, chemistry references - what sort of self-respecting blood supremacist would want to study Muggle science?

Harry sat back down on the stone slab, trying to figure things out. Had Voldemort made some new ally, someone not so opposed to Muggles on principle? Was this the work of someone else entirely? If so, why _now_? Surely it wasn't a coincidence that they'd just _happened_ to take him right after Voldemort was enabled to move openly once more.

He frowned again and lay back on the "bed". No matter how much he might've wanted to pace back and forth in his cell or try to find a way out, he was still sore and aching, his body dragging him uncomfortably down, and he just didn't have the strength to rail at his situation and fight back. Activity as minimal as standing and looking around had sapped what strength he had; he'd need to rest and regain some energy before he could do much of anything.


End file.
